


'Til Sundown

by MagpieMinx (CardinalFox)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Dehumanization through fame and dismissal, F/M, Kidnapping aftermath, Kissing, Redundant thoughts on Steve's beauty, Steve being an unbearably tender bf, Steve's responsibility complex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 07:39:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17504408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CardinalFox/pseuds/MagpieMinx
Summary: In the aftermath of your kidnapping and rescue, you and Steve share a quiet moment.





	'Til Sundown

You wake up to the familiar sound of fists laying into a heavy bag without mercy.  You can hear the dangerous creak of the chain, the dull impact happening in ones, twos, threes, fours.  You sigh deeply and close your eyes, curling up tight under your blanket. It’s awkward to keep it on when you’re wearing one of Steve’s leather jackets, constantly trying to slide right off.  You give up with another sigh, sitting up and pulling it over your lap as you do, rubbing at your eyes with one hand. You’re sore all over from your ordeal, still exhausted, and now you’re starting to feel abandoned, left behind.  It’s irrational, but not surprising given what you’ve been through in the past three days.

You shake your head and throw the blanket off abruptly, getting up and wobbling as you try not to fall.  Your legs burn and shake, but you force them to work properly as you leave the lobby area and head to the boxing room.  You lean against the doorframe and watch Steve’s back as he attacks the heavy bag again. There are three more laying nearby, duct-taped all over from where Steve’s hit them too hard, too many times, the canvas giving up and splitting open.  There’s sand on the floor, and a bag that looks like it’s given up the ghost laying against the wall. 

Even knowing that Steve’s still distressed, still furious, still filled with urgent fear and potent self-loathing, it’s hard not to find him beautiful.  Watching him makes you feel the same way that listening to music does, the same way that reading and hearing poetry does. Maybe it says something about you, that you find so much beauty in someone intentionally altered for violence, for war, someone who cultivates and maintains that skillset.  It’s just so hard to watch Steve fight and not think he looks like some kind of avenging angel, destructive and glorious.

Steve makes a sound somewhere between a growl and a grunt, and then suddenly the heavy bag tears free and goes flying.  He stops and just stares at the bag, and you can imagine the disappointed frown on his face and can’t help a half-hearted smile.  He huffs, stepping forward to collect the bag, picks it up by the broken canvas at the top, drags it over to the wall. He sees you from the corner of his eye, drops the bag next to the first and immediately comes over to you.  His stride is long, carrying him quickly across the floor, conveying his impatience. You can see his urge to jog, or better yet, run, but he’s approaching you carefully, like he’s afraid he might scare you.

“Hey, you okay?” he asks, coming to a stop in front of you, one wrapped hand coming up and brushing so gently against your eyebrow.  Your half-hearted smile shifts into something softer and warmer as you lean into his touch.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” you murmur in response as his fingers skim down your cheek.  He’s so incredibly careful with you, and while sometimes you want more than that from him, now it touches your heart deeply that he can be so tender in the aftermath of it all.

He frowns deeply, his lips pressing together before he says, “You’re going to have a black eye for a while.”

“I’m going to have a lot of bruises for a while,” you respond with a wry twist of your mouth, “But it could be-”

“Don’t say it,” Steve cuts you off, his voice sharp and haunted, “It shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”  There’s tension in his chest and shoulders now, his hands dropping to his sides and curling into fists. He looks away, scanning the hallway and lobby behind you for threats, like less than a day after he’s gotten you back someone else will be gunning for you.

“Steve,” you say softly, resting your palm against his breastbone and pressing lightly, “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I could have taken more precautions to prevent it,” he says, anger shifting under his tone, “I could have-”

“You can’t hold yourself responsible for the decisions of other people, Steve,” you interrupt him softly, and suddenly he’s looking at you with something anguished, something tortured in his eyes.  He holds himself to such a high standard, but this is his not-so-secret sin: the belief that he can take the world on his broad shoulders, that he can carry the weight of it, that he can somehow  _ fix _ it all if he just tries hard enough.

_ But I am responsible _ , his expression says,  _ It’s my failure, as much as if I hurt you myself _ .

You want to argue with him, but he’ll never budge on this, so instead you just lean in and rest your cheek against his chest.  He responds exactly the way you expected him to, his arms circling you, gathering you closer, pulling you in against him. It feels so good to be held, warm and safe, you feel like nothing could touch you as long as you’re in his arms.  It was the only reason you fell asleep earlier, because he wrapped you in his jacket and carried you here. Yes, you’d begged him not to leave you alone, but neither could he stand to let you out of his sight. Carrying you here to the boxing gym had been the easiest solution, and he’d done it without a breath of complaint.

“How long are you going to blame yourself for this?” you ask him, pressing yourself just a little closer, his body heat seeping through your skin and into your bones.  It makes the pain recede a little bit more, though whether it’s the heat or the reassurance doing that, you can’t tell.

“Longer than you want me to,” he murmurs, because it’s the only answer he can give you that he knows you won’t argue with.

You tip your head up to look at him, open your mouth to say something, but Steve kisses you.  His mouth is soft, moving slow, and he lingers for a long time despite the fact that the angle has to be uncomfortable for his neck.  He stays and stays, only pulling away long enough for you to gasp for air, and then he’s kissing you again, until your knees weaken and you’re leaning so heavily into him that it feels like he’s supporting most of your weight.  By the time he pulls away, you’re so kiss-drunk that you can’t remember what you were going to say, only that you were sad and you’re still sad because under the necessary armor around his heart, Steve is hurting.

You know his story, you know the hero, but you also know the man, know that there’s a soul-deep grief in him that he rarely lets anyone see, much less touch.  This close in the wake of your kidnapping and rescue, his old wounds have been ripped wide open and he’s scrambling to cover them. He uses responsibility and endless striving as a shield for his spirit the same way he uses his iconic shield to defend his body.  Most people are too dazzled by his shields to see the man behind them.

You’re too close to him now to be dazzled, and you have to wonder if that scares him in a different way.  He can’t deflect your eyes with a shield, can’t pretend that underneath his uniforms he’s not a flesh-and-blood man, can’t hide behind the serum-enhanced muscle.  Underneath all of that, he’s still the frail boy from Brooklyn trying to harness the power he was handed to fulfill the mission he was given when he was reborn. He’s still the boy aching to be noticed, to be loved, to be more than he is, to be the good man Dr. Erskine told him he was and the protector of the world he wanted to save.  It’s unfortunate that fame is as dehumanizing as the dismissal he faced during his formative years, but he’s always been the one to make the sacrifice play.

Sometimes it hurts to be this close to him, to know that he’ll put everyone and everything before himself, even when he most needs to be selfish.  You do what you can sometimes, pull at him, pretend to be weaker than you are so that he has an excuse, so he can lie to himself. Today, you’re not pretending and you need him as much as he needs you, maybe more.  You need him to tend your heart in the same way you normally tend his, and maybe the worst part of it is how  _ good _ he is at it.

“I love you,” you sigh, still leaning against him, sinking into the warmth surrounding you and letting go of your thoughts.  Even now, there’s something about his presence that calms you, leaves you blissfully grounded, and the only thing you feel now is a quiet gratitude for this man who is so much more and so much better than even he knows.

“I love you too,” he murmurs without missing a beat, with the readiness of automaticity, but with so much genuine tenderness that it could break your heart at the wrong time.

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I ended up on a Steve Rogers kick again (thanks K) so this is really self-indulgent. My favorite High Drama™ trope is collateral kidnapping, but the aftermath of it is always want really interests me, so this is exactly that. I've included a lot of my personal thoughts about Steve and who he is as a person and what everything he's been through means for his character.
> 
> If you're commenting, tell me what you see Steve wearing while he's boxing in this fic!


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